This is the second part of Don McCue’s column on the role California and San Bernardino county played in the Civil War.

When news arrived via Pony Express that Lincoln had also triumphed back East and thus would be the next president, Breckinridge Democrats (the faction of the party led by Vice President John C. Breckinridge) were incensed. Even before the election, many had stated that the Southern states would be fully justified in seceding from the Union should Lincoln be elected.

When seven Southern states did secede in the months before Lincoln’s inauguration, some suggested that prosperous California, isolated as it was from the fractious East, should secede as well and form a “Pacific Republic.”

Although Lincoln had won California’s electoral votes, Democrats still dominated the state Legislature and Breckinridge Democrat John Downey had been elected governor. The attitude of the United States Army regulars stationed in California would be crucial.

In December 1860, lame duck Democratic President James Buchanan sent Texan Albert Sidney Johnston to take command of all troops in California. Although secessionists in California were tempted to induce Johnston to turn over federal arms to them, Johnston refused, citing the oath he had sworn as an officer in the United States Army.

After the secession of Texas and the attack on Fort Sumter in April, however, Johnston’s loyalty wavered. Fortunately Lincoln had anticipated this possibility and immediately following his inauguration on March 4, he had arranged for a northern general, Edwin Sumner, to be surreptitiously sent to California as a replacement.

When Sumner arrived at Johnston’s San Francisco headquarters on April 25, Johnston resigned his commission and journeyed to Los Angeles, where his wife’s brother John Griffin was a prominent rancher. In June Johnston and 35 other pro-Southern men left California, traveling across the Mojave Desert and then through Arizona and New Mexico, an 800-mile journey in the height of summer, before arriving in Texas where they offered their services to the Confederacy.

Given command of the Confederate Army of the Mississippi, Johnston would be shot behind the knee at the battle of Shiloh in April 1862. Refusing treatment in the midst of battle he would bleed to death. His loss was considered a grave blow to the Confederacy.

Back in San Francisco, Gen. Sumner was gravely concerned by reports of disloyalty in Southern California. He withdrew Union garrisons from forts Tejon and Mojave and sent them to intimidate Confederate sympathizers in Los Angeles.

In June he received an alarming letter from Edwin A. Sherman of San Bernardino. Two months before, Sherman had purchased the struggling San Bernardino Herald newspaper, renamed it the Weekly Patriot, and transformed it into a strident advocate for the Republican Party and abolitionism. Sherman warned:

“There exists amongst us through all these southern counties a secret organization of secessionists Secret meetings continue to be held all over this lower country, and secession and disunion is boldly avowed in our streets. Shooting continues to be the order of the day, and drunken desperadoes create disturbances all of the time. We have a singular population, composed of Mormons, Mormon apostates, who are even worse, gamblers, English Jews, and the devil’s own population to boot, while we only have about a dozen good respectable families right in town, who are at the mercy of these desperadoes; and the secessionists of (El) Monte are only waiting the withdrawal of the troops from Los Angeles before they commence operations. If a company of dragoons could be stationed here it would give a feeling of security to every honest citizen and friend of the Union in this vicinity.”

Next week: Union Maj. James Carleton establishes an outpost in San Bernardino amid strong pro-Southern sentiment in the area.

Don McCue is archivist and head of Special Collections at A.K. Smiley Public Library.

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